


Falling Numbers

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will can't help the counting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Numbers

**Author's Note:**

> I think this was for a fic_promptly prompt at some point, but it drifted.

It’s just numbers, that’s all. Numbers are easy, and Will does them very well. The numbers say that the average choice they make these days has about a one in ten chance of success, and they make a hundred of them in a mission. The numbers say that at least once a mission, every one of them will make one choice where the chance of success shrinks towards a vanishing point. Ethan sometimes will make more. These are the numbers Will knows.

He can’t think of that during the mission, because Ethan cannot stand to have Will on the sidelines, reading him math. Ethan plunges Will into the heart of things, not ‘can this work?’ but ‘make it work’. Their choices have paid off, so far, and every time they do feels like one more step towards the time when they don’t. But Will can’t think about that.

The numbers, he guesses, have to go somewhere. So they play out in his dreams, mind still working even after his body has been worn to exhaustion. He plays out the other numbers, the nine other times in every ten. Jane blinks before she smiles, Benji snags a wire, Ethan—Ethan is bloodied and bruised and broken in every way that has already happened but all of these times he doesn’t stand back up.

Will wakes up still calculating variables, out of breath, numbers tangled on his heavy tongue. He wraps his arms around his chest.

Ethan is looking at him. He’s sitting watch across the room, bright-eyed. “Count sheep,” he advises. “Count down from a hundred, whatever works.”

The problem, Will doesn’t say, is that he can’t think of anything to count that would work right now.

Ethan keeps his eyes fixed on Will’s. Will breaks first, gaze drifting down Ethan’s body instead. The hotel room is quiet, just the four of them breathing. He can see Ethan’s chest rise and fall. Will focuses on that, counts each time Ethan inhales, and lets himself fall asleep to those numbers, rising inexorably towards a point he doesn’t want to see.


End file.
